IIf you are going to be a criminal, it is wise to stay low. Sadly, playing safe is not in the DNA of most lawbreakers, and it was certainly the case with Geraldine Elizabeth “Liz” Carmichael, who took the world by storm in 1974 by beating Detroit’s “Big Three” car makers with the Twentieth Century. Motor Car Corporation and its flagship product: the Dale, a three-wheeled car that promised to deliver 70 miles per gallon, making it the ideal vehicle for an oil crisis ravaged America. By the time Liz launched this unreliable creation, she had already begun the transition to a woman, adding even more fuel to the media frenzy that would quickly engulf her.
Directed by Nick Cammilleri and Zackary Drucker, and executive produced by Jay and Mark Duplass (Wild Wild Country), HBO’s four-part docuseries The Lady and the Valley (debuts Jan. 31) begins the exciting early years of Liz’s life, when she married prior to menopause and abandoned two wives – and the multiple children she had with them – before joining third husband Vivian living. They had five children together, and as Vivian’s brother Charles recalls, Liz (then known as Jerry) was always a fun-loving con man, adept at creating false identities and defrauding suckers (especially businesses) out of their hard-earned money. Given Liz’s penchant for cheating plans, it didn’t take long for the Michael clan to be on the run from federal agents thanks to an elaborate ruse of counterfeiting. Contemporary memories of daughter Candi paint a picture of an itinerant life on the run, to the point that she and her siblings’ birth certificates have false names – a situation that still gives them headaches.
The Lady and the Valley spends almost his entire first part on Liz’s wild backstory, enlivened by pop-up book-like animated reenactment sequences created with old photos of the players in question. It’s a new stylistic twist that further captures the madness of Michaels’ early years, in which family gatherings were organized through coded newspaper reports and everyone had to be ready to fly to a new town and home in the blink of an eye. In short, Liz was an inveterate charlatan. She was also a trans woman, and while bypassing the authorities, she slowly began the transition process – a development that was readily accepted by her children and, after some initial hesitation, by her wife Vivian.
After a surgical procedure in Tijuana, Liz began living in public as a woman, and in 1973, while working at a marketing company, discovered an invention as brash and unconventional as she was: the Dale, a three-wheeled car (made by Dale Clifft) which she immediately decided would be her revolutionary ticket to world domination. After revising Clifft’s original designs to make the Dale more attractive (full of a canary yellow paint job), Liz got a prototype for the Los Angeles Auto Show. She then went on a press blitz to announce her intention to take on America’s auto bigwigs – including having The Dale appear on The price is correct. It wasn’t long before Liz was a front-page sensation, and the uniqueness of her product was matched only by the boldness of her claims.
Given Liz’s criminal past – and her continued status as a federal fugitive – it should come as no surprise to learn that she soon began enlisting the help of mafia figures for the Twentieth Century Motor Car Corporation, whose name came from Atlas shrugged, written by libertarian Liz ‘favorite author, Ayn Rand. She also started taking customer deposits for the car in production, which she had to keep in an escrow account, but instead used to fund her new venture. This was a clear case of fraud, especially since the makeshift Dale – built from a hodgepodge of borrowed parts by some random engineers – was doomed to failure. A series of investigative stories by KABC reporter Dick Carlson quickly exposed the sham, leading to criminal charges and, after Liz was convicted, another flight from justice and her shady, quasi-illegal business operation.
The Lady and the Valley thrives when it stays focused on Liz’s daring scam, backed up by firsthand stories from family members and colleagues who describe her as both a crafty con man and a doting wife and mother. For the majority of the first three episodes, it proves an entertaining gonzo portrait of rebellious self-definition as Liz strives to break legal and social norms to make something of herself. Sadly, by the time the final episode rolls out, Cammilleri and Drucker’s series falls in love with arousing sympathy for the subject as a victim of intolerant anti-discrimination, largely due to the media’s stance on Liz – led by Carlson, whose son Tucker continues his ugly legacy on Fox News – was to ridicule and humiliate her as a man posing as a woman in order to escape law enforcement. (Dick Carlson eventually won a Peabody for his transphobic coverage of Carmichael and would later make headlines for his performance against transgender tennis player Renee Richards.)
“… The media’s stance on Liz – led by Carlson, whose son Tucker continues his ugly legacy on Fox News – was to ridicule and humiliate her as a man posing as a woman in order to escape law enforcement .“
That Liz was treated unfairly (and sometimes horribly) by journalists is undeniable from the archive footage on display. But through talking commentary and a score that conveys his festive attitude, The Lady and the Valley tries to portray Liz as an unfairly persecuted trans-outlaw hero who just doesn’t fit in with her significant rap magazine. To do this, it downplays and / or rationalizes its crime, only trapping it in messy and dubious logic. Most confusingly of all, the series claims that Liz’s trans identity wasn’t a hoax and thus was unrelated to her crime (which makes sense), only to turn around and claim that if she were in a different, more tolerant era Growing up, she could have lived a very different, law-abiding life – a contradictory attitude that ultimately suggests a link between her transness and chronic quackery.
Consequently, The Lady and the Valley eventually loses the thread, culminating in a history lesson about maligned trans men and women who, by its addition, portrays Liz more as a like-minded oppressed pioneer than the bizarre con man she was until her death. It is eventually so consumed by infusing his material with hagiographic import – with the making of Liz’s saga meaningful– that it forgets what made it so attractive in the first place.